I’m not sure it’s possible to have this much fun if you aren’t a dog. I love the front dog’s shadow, it shows she’s completely off the ground. It hasn’t been taken at a funny angle, they really are going steeply downhill.
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A Bad Guide 
I’m not sure it’s possible to have this much fun if you aren’t a dog.
So very true! =) But your picture gave us a good idea of their feelings.
Oh, Crown, how I enjoyed Sunday Philosophy Club by Mcall Smith!
I didn’t have internet connection in our travel, but now I’m eager to look for an Edinburgh map and see the places mentioned there. I loved Isabel Dalhouise and her applied ethical worries. Thank you very much for your recommendation (it was for mab, actually, I just was nosey)
(Sorry, “Dalhousie”)
I’m eager to look for an Edinburgh map and see the places mentioned there.
Yes, that’s what I did. I’m glad you liked it. I’m now reading the third one, I got them at the library. And of course all the comments are for everyone to read. I hope you all had a wonderful trip – I was very envious – and that we’re going to see lots of pictures at your blog.
Exhilaration!
As I’ve said before, these airborne animals with shadows on the ground remind me of Kipling’s picture of Old Man Kangaroo
It’s always good to say again, I’m glad you can remember things. That lower one is a great illustration. I knew that Kipling was the brother-in-law of the painter Burne-Jones, but I didn’t know until just now (Wikipedia) that his father was a sculptor and “pottery designer” (isn’t that a potter?).
The people who pot, and the people who design pots got separated. Kipling ought to have written about it. Morris would’ve published it, maybe.
Now I have to read your recommended books, Julia & Crown. When and where will I find them? In the summer at Oxfam?
I remember Dorothy Dunnet (as she was) emphasizing that you cannot run “along” streets in Edinburgh. You can run UP them or DOWN them, but not “along” them.
So I look forward to Ms Dalhousie very much.
I can remember that much about Edinburgh. & tea with Mrs Dunnett…
Presumably you cannot WALK along the streets, either?
I have also mentioned before that my family once stayed for a few days in Edinburgh’s New Town (i.e. the district north of Prince’s Street that was built in a grand and deliberate light grey (though later subject to soot) way in the 18th Century and therefore doesn’t have that twisty turny rabbit-warren troll-under-the-bridge quality of the older parts), in a B+B run by a family whose daughter was named Velocity.
¿Velocity? Poor girl…
Catannea, have you got any kind of e-book. I have the novels in epub and mobi format.
Yesterday I wore my raincoat bought at Princess St. in 1995, as an homage for/to (?) Edinburgh
(and because it was raining, of course ;-)
I can imagine Miss Brodie: “You must accelerate, Velocity dear.”
I think I said last time that she married Speedy Gonzalez, but then I found out that he was a mouse.
Cat. if I can get them out of my local library in Norway, they must be available all over the place.
I must watch the film of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie again. I suppose it’s set in Edinburgh.
Ø, the light grey, is that a local stone? In Brandenburg in the former East Germany all the sand-yellow stucco buildings turned grey through lack of maintenance. It looked really depressing, as if the country was running in black & white.
Apparently local sandstone, and not entirely grey.
“I suppose it’s set in Edinburgh.” What a tease!
I’m only English, what do I know?
Sandstone is my favourite building stone.
From that website about the quarry:
Doctors long showed concern over the health hazards of working the silica-rich sandstone. In 1852, one noted that “a Craigleith man was done at 30 and dead at 35”. On his recommendation, the quarriers grew beards and moustaches to act as respirators.
No female quarriers. That’s both awful and pretty amusing. Medicine was a primitive science until fairly recently; when all else fails there’s something to be said for that kind of ingenuity.
“Sandstone is my favourite building stone.” The grey Edinburgh sandstone is much harder than red sandstone used in the west of Scotland.
http://images.google.com/imgres?q=annan+bridge&hl=en&biw=1220&bih=876&tbm=isch&tbnid=xR3oNLYiZmT8bM:&imgrefurl=http://silverscrappers.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html&docid=ZhZuLpJkgysYdM&imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gxTpZGU3o90/ToXMSmiG_eI/AAAAAAAABXo/LRUkycIsAOs/s1600/Annan%252BBridge%252B5.jpg&w=919&h=745&ei=VqS6T8v0DoqGhQfUzdGGDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=145&vpy=395&dur=618&hovh=201&hovw=248&tx=79&ty=103&sig=101930757102784797184&page=1&tbnh=164&tbnw=202&start=0&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0,i:111
That brig was designed by Stevenson, grandfather of RLS.
My great great great great (don’t know how many) grandfather was a Scottish engineer who emigrated to Canada and worked on the Rideau Waterway. I wonder what he did, exactly.
(new-old topic) The robins nesting by our driveway: Yesterday Tesi, who is very tuned in to the language of birds (I just hear a tweeting, twittering, squawking, whatever — never think of trying to make sense of it or identify the speaker) woke up saying I wonder what that robin is so upset about — could it be that the cat is staring at it through a window? A bit later I noticed that the nest was empty. Undoubtedly the reason why the parents were yelling was that the three great big young robins were making their first clumsy flights. I can imagine (sorry, Stu) what it feels like to watch one’s babies starting to make their way in the big world.
Very nice that red sandstone. Is the bridge curved in plan? I love that, arches that are smaller on one side than the other. A couple of hundred years later, and I’ve no idea how to design it so that the vaulting masonry pattern works. It curves in too many directions.
Those robins grew up fast. I remember when they were just cuckoo’s eggs. Dyv. wakes up and says she can hear badgers in the garden. I don’t hear it, it’s too high-pitched, but I see the evidence. They dig for worms in the goats’ front yard. If only they’d make an appointment, so I could photograph them.
I imagine the same, empty (sorry again Stu)!
And I hope that you can see the young robins soon.
Crown, look what I found in chapter 7 of Friends, Lovers and Chocolate (I almost laughed aloud in the subway)
Her reference to cognitive science was clearly not what he expected of a woman working in a delicatessen, but then he remembered that she was a philosopher. Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh delicatessens, just as one might be waited upon by psychoanalysts in the restaurants of Buenos Aires. ‘Is the braised beef really what you want?’
Last line should look like this:
“Is the braised beef really what you want?”
Yes, I thought of you when I read that – not that you’re a psychoanalyst or a waitress.
It was a surprise that the author knew that about Buenos Aires. It’s quite true. We have lots of them (I don’t complain)
When I read the fist part “Perhaps one should expect to be attended to by philosophers in Edinburgh”, I thought “like psychologist in Buenos Aires”, so it was very funny when I read more or less the same at the end of the phrase.
It was a surprise that the author knew that about Buenos Aires.
He seems to be well traveled. I had thought that he’d made the BA example up, it’s interesting to find out it’s true.
yes, it’s very accurate (in a generalization kind of way, of course.) He must have been here or read a lot about contemporary Buenos Aires (or read a little, there’s not much more to say about us)
Oh, right! Nothing to say. I suppose that’s why there are no Argentine novelists… No, wait…
Googling “McCall Smith Buenos Aires” yields this.
Sorry, this.
I love this photo, and you’re right — when the dogs are running like mad, with the one in back yipping in annoyance that he can’t keep up, they are just so clearly ecstatic. My dog smiles when she runs.
Right now we are having some problems with fledglings, which need to be protected from the dogs, and then the dive-bombing parent birds — who actually hit the dogs’ backs (and then they need protection). We rescued one little guy who apparently was having trouble getting airborn, dug around to find four worms for him (which he snarfled down), and then using duct tape and a bird feeder created a nest far from dogs for him for the night. He was gone the next morning, so we assumed he mastered flight (all those worms helped).
¡jajaja! / hahaha!
Well, he won’t find that, I’m sorry to tell you…
We don’t have streets with names of famous psychoanalysts, but some parts of the “barrio de Palermo” is referred to as “Villa Freud” because it’s full of psychologists and psychoanalysts’ offices (is that right?, we say “consultorios”).
Almost everyone here is familiar with psychoanalytic stuff, and was in treatment in some time of their life.
Thanks for the search, Ø!
Just to the right of that bridge is this house
which was formerly the Academy where Thom Carlyle was pupil and later teacher.
There is, or is gong to be, a film about Villa Freud.
That’s very funny…
You’re a great (re)searcher, Ø!
Apparently it havent been filmed yet. Have you seen the trailer?
http://www.villafreud.com/trailer
Thanks for the Carlyle, dearie. Why use that pale mortar with dark stone? Is it traditionally like that or is it only repointing? It looks like a jigsaw puzzle or freckles.
Repointing, I’d say. It didn’t look like that when my uncle owned it.
I have an excellent (Bartholomew) map of Edinburgh, so I’ll have to look for those books. (My favorite piece of Edinburgh literature so far: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg.
)
Thank you, Language. How interesting that book looks. I hadn’t heard of it.
Your uncle, huh. Did he find any Carlyle stuff? ‘Carlyle woz here’ carved into the woodwork, perhaps?
Quite an amazing book, according to the description. I think I would save if for broad daylight in the summer, it would be too much to read during a dark and stormy winter night!
“I hadn’t heard of it.” My dear Sir, how have you missed my urging all and sundry to read it, all over the Web? It is, by far, the most stunning novel I’ve ever read.
Carlyle stuff: I’ve got old Tam’s smoking cap, but not from the old Academy building, but by kith-and-kin connections.
What is the point of a smoking cap? Do you keep a couple of rollups in the hatband for emergencies, or is it a knitted item that you wear in the winter when you go outside for a smoke?
I think it’s something like a stove pipe hat.
A hat from which smoke issues. I hadn’t thought of that.
Smoking cap: people in previous centuries did not wash their hair much, and smoke clings to the hair, so perhaps a smoking cap was to prevent that by absorbing the smoke? (question: did Sherlock Holmes wear one of these at home?)
Oh, possibly. I think I’ve seen one in a Holmes illustration. It’s one of those cone-shaped purple satin caps, isn’t it. Like a night cap or a thinking cap.
Yes, that’s really what it is. Look.
very similar to a fez. My husband says the fez’s tassel is for shooing away the flies (who knows if he’s right), the tassel of the smoking hat would then be for shoo away the smoke?
smoking cap (sorry!)
Maybe Language Hat knows something about this!
In Spanish the dinner jacket or tuxedo is called “esmoquin”. According to this file, this name comes from an invented legend related to smoking: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esmoquin
Maybe Language Hat knows something about this!
I have to confess smoking caps are new to me.
But then, I don’t smoke.
Well now we know what to get you for Christmas, Language. I don’t think anyone’s going to force you to smoke while you wear it.
I didn’t know the fez tassel was to shoo away flies, it would make me dizzy. From Ø’s link I found a blogger who shows pictures of smoking hats she might buy for her boyfriend’s birthday – doesn’t he read her blog? Traditionally birthday presents are a surprise.
Esmoquin – isn’t it called le smoking in French too? I’ve always wanted a white one, but I’d look pretty silly wearing it in Norway.
>A. J. P. Crown
“Oui, c’est le smoking en français.”
I don’t know if the pope’s majordomo was wearing a white dinner jacket when he was arrested because of “Vatileaks”. Anyway, it’s elemental Mr. Watson.
When they’re electing a Pope, I think the cardinals put on white or black smoking jackets, depending on, um …
>Empty
I’d say better black or white smoke, depending on humidity of straws, if I’m not wrong.
>Empty
I think I didn’t get your joke. I have slow reflexes.
The tuxedo is le smoking in French, from English smoking jacket. I guess the well-dressed smoker’s costume included both a cap and a jacket! even though the tuxedo is considered rather formal nowadays, I think it was considered fairly informal at one time, not something a well-dressed man would wear for a formal dinner.
Looking up smoking cap on google, I found a pattern for a crochet and embroidered smoking cap! All these things date from the times when the idle rich had nothing better to do than to show themselves, and changed their clothes several times a day. Women who had time to themselves (if they could rely on servants for most daily chores) spent it in making ornaments for the person as well as the home: men’s caps, vests, slippers, and more, were usually made and embroidered by women for the men in their lives.
It’s smoking in Norwegian too. I used mine only a couple of weeks ago — for the first time in fifteen years, I think — when a colleague of my wife invited to a cocktail party, of all things, and I decided I couldn’t be any less up to the occasion than James Bond.
Jesús, it wasn’t much of a joke.
The fact that in some languages tuxedo = smoking jacket, plus Crown’s mention of white jackets, plus the dichotomy between “black tie” occasions and “white tie” occasions, plus your mention of the Vatican, made me think of the smoke signals (black or white) that are part of the grand process of choosing a new pope.
I was wondering how they achieve the desired smoke color. Is it in fact something about the humidity of straws?
And is it really true that a bow tie is a pajarito in some dialects of Spanish?
a “pajaritA” in fact (is a feminine noun). We don’t use that term here in Argentina, I always have to think some seconds what it means when I found it in a Spanish text. Here we call that “corbata de moño” or just “moñito” (little bow).
>Empty
I’d read that the black smoke ( “fumata bianca”) is got burning the ballots with wet straws. In this file I’ve just found you can also read about the white smoke: they add a chemical product as well.
http://www.fundeu.es/vademecum-F-fumata-blanca-fumata-negra-5583.html
And yes, “pajarita” although it’s more similar to a butterfly.
>Empty
Besides the priests’ clothes, these colors are related to two powerful orders in a figurative sense: Opus Dei is so-called the white freemasonry and the boss (the General) of Jesuits is the black Pope.
A bow tie in French is un noeud papillon ‘a butterfly knot’.
The pasta shape called bow tie in English is farfalla in Italian; I find that the neckwear is farfallina.
Google translate says that in German the neckwear is Fliege.
According to Wikipedia, the dicky is nowadays a symbol of wealth and class – do they mean in movies? It was originally known as a detachable bosom.
The same article also has “besom” for “bosom” twice in the same sentence.
Thee is a funny bit about noisy starched shirts, or possibly dickeys, in Gaudy Night, but I have never understood it technically.
We had a bat in our bedroom last night.
and…? Tell us about the bat, please!
Yes, tell us more. Was it by choice? I can see the advantage (they eat mosquitoes), but it’s very unusual.
I’m looking forward to telling all, but right now I have to get self to work and kids to school.
If you let it breed ,you’ll have a battery.
… but you’d be advised to keep it on your side of the room. It’s husbandry after all.
>Trond Engen
Or, if it is multiparous, you’ll have a battalion.
Well, maybe you spoke of Lamborghini murciélago (“murciélago” = bat), obviously a car with a battery, although, according to this file, Murciélago was the name of a bull to confuse things even more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini_Murci%C3%A9lago
ISomewhere I have a book (one of several) on ancient Mesoamerican art (Aztec, Mayan, etc). This one is in French, translated from Spanish. I think it was the Aztecs who had a “Bat god”, among others. In my book this god is “le dieu Murciélago” (a French bat is une chauve-souris).
a bat in the bedroom
I have had that too. It happens on summer nights if you don’t have a proper wire screen on your window. The bat just flies in circles aroung the ceiling light at tremendous speed, it is just a blur, you can hardly see it although you hear the noise. The only thing to do is open the window as much as possible and turn off all the lights so the bat can calm down and escape. I don’t know where bats give birth and what they do with the babies at first, but I certainly would not want a litter of bats in my bedroom! In an attic, perhaps, but not in a room with people.
My experience has been a bit different: bigger circles. Are they drawn to light? I would have thought not.
Ø: I’m looking forward to telling all…
But he’s left us hanging.
I remember murcielago came up once before. I cant find it, though.
I’ve just posted some bat stories at my blog, but I haven’t finished. And so to bed.
In Britain there are draconian laws limiting your rights to expel bats from your house.
Sort of like squatters then. Quite right too (bats, not squatters). They do shit all over the place (bats & squatters), I think that’s one objection people have, otherwise why not?
Did I ever mention the cat lady who found a possum in her parlor?
I don’t think so, no.
A catloving lady from Platte
fed fourtynine cats in her flat.
When a possum came in
it was soon to begin
on a diet of animal fat.
Platte County Chamber of Commerce
Information about the communities in Platte County including Chugwater, Glendo, Guernsey, Hartville and Wheatland.
Chugwater?
A catloving lady from Platte
kept twelve vegan cats in her fllat
till a possum in the room
sent her bouncing to her doom
and the cats on to animal fat..
bat in the bedroom
I did not mean that the bat flew right next to the light, the circle is quite wide, but still a circle, and the bat is flying very fast.
strict laws against expelling bats from the house
I think these laws must refer to forcibly getting rid of bats nesting in the attic or such. Surely opening a window wide and waiting for a bat to fly out can’t be against the law!
I don’t think a possum would pose any danger to a cat.
This harmless eccentric used to put out food for stray cats under her deck every day, and she also welcomed them into her house, too. They were all around her all the time. One day she was relaxing in an armchair in front of the TV,
And, dangling her hand from the chair,
She detected a creature with hair.
Just a cat, yes–or was he?–
More bristly than fuzzy–
She found a marsupial there!
I don’t think a possum would pose any danger to a cat.
I know… that’s why I had to make another rhyme. Too bad it’s so hard to find rhymes on ‘marsupial’, by the way.
By the way — and not that it has anything to do with the flying animal — just the other day I came to learn that bat is the lost base form of better – best. It’s found in German Fürbaß lit. “fore-good”.
I’m never sure if anyone’s joking around here, but in case you’re serious: that ain’t so. Quoth the OED:
“[Better points] to a positive stem extant in no Germanic language, and probably wanting also in Germanic.”
Thanks, Hat. I was serious, but it appears that our sources disagree. Or maybe we all agree, and I failed to add nuance to my declaration of “the lost base form”. What I mean is that the positive stem has been lost for a long time, but it’s found in surviving old derivations. One is ON/NIc/NFar bati, Nynorsk bate m. “gain, advantage” < *batan- m.
Well, that’s (as the Scots say) “not proven,” though it’s an interesting possibility (hence the OED’s “probably”).
It’s Bjorvand & Lindeman all the way (but shortened out of lazyness). Frankly, I don’t see how the bati words can not be related. But the positive itself is lost, and may for all I know have been lost since well before Germanic — although the derived nouns look younger to me.
I have posted the conclusion of the bat story.
I don’t know how reliable the Online Etymological Dictionary is, but this is what it says about better:
O.E. bettra, earlier betera, from P.Gmc. *batizo-, from PIE *bhad- “good;” see best. Comparative adjective of good in the older Germanic languages (cf. O.Fris. betera, O.S. betiro, O.N. betr, Dan. bedre, O.H.G. bezziro</i., Ger. besser, Goth. batiza). In English it superseded bet in the adverbial sense by 1600. Better half “wife” is first attested 1570s.
It looks like bet had the base root (except for Gothic which preserved the vowel)..
I meant “Online Etymology Dictionary”. Here is best:
O.E. beste, reduced by assimilation of -t- from earlier O.E. betst “best, first, in the best manner,” originally superlative of bot “remedy, reparation,” the root word now only surviving in to boot (see boot (2)), though its comparative, better, and superlative, best, have been transferred to good (and in some cases well). From P.Gmc. root *bat-, with comparative *batizon and superlative *batistaz (cf. O.Fris., O.S., M.Du. best, O.H.G. bezzist, Ger. best, O.N. beztr, Goth. batists).
There is an inaccuracy here: best, an adjective form, cannot be the superlative of bot ‘remedy, etc’ which is a noun. Similarly for the comparative better. The entry should just mention “related to bot ‘remedy, etc'”.
And here is boot n.2:
“profit, use,” O.E. bot “help, relief, advantage; atonement,” lit. “a making better,” from P.Gmc. *boto (see better). Cf. Ger. Buße “penance, atonement,” Goth. botha “advantage.” Now mostly in phrase to boot (O.E. to bote).
Note: this is the dictionary at http://www.etymonline, but there is another dictionary with this title. The cross-checking could be improved, but the information looks good overall.
Yes, B&L says under bot f. “amendment, aid, fine (for paying), patch (on clothes)” that it’s from *bo:to:- f. “amendation”, where *bo:t- is the long grade of the root *bat-. The vowel pair *a ~ *o: is as it should be in early Germanic.